Appliances, including domestic appliances, may have a door to enclose an interior chamber in which items are treated by the appliance. The door provides access to the interior chamber to allow the user add and remove items for treatment, while also enclosing the interior chamber during treatment of the items.
Examples of a domestic appliance include: dishwasher, washer, dryer, washer/dryer combination, microwave, oven, toaster oven, refrigerator, and freezer. While the present technology is described in the context of appliances, including domestic appliances, it should be understood that the present technology is applicable to other contexts that relate to a handle and a fascia panel.
As described above, the door may provide access for the user to add and remove items from the appliance for treatment. Therefore, the door may be user-facing, i.e., the door itself is accessible to the user to be opened and closed. In other words, the exterior of the door is at least one part of the appliance that is exposed to the user. Since the door may be exposed to the user and, in the case of a domestic appliance a visible fixture within the home, it may be desirable for the door to have appealing aesthetics.
To provide this appealing aesthetic, any exposed portion of the appliance, including the door, may be designed in a visually appealing manner. For example, the door may have a one or more panels that cover a significant amount of the visible portions of the front door. Also, since the door is used for access, a handle may be formed in one or more of the panels to allow the user to manually open and close the door. Other related considerations in designing a panel for an appliance door, include a design that is easy to manufacture inexpensively and repeatably, but with minimal defects in the visible surface portions.
Making a panel for the appliance door as a molded plastic part is a way to balance these considerations, particularly the cost consideration. Molding a panel from plastic involves further considerations. For example, the visible portions of the panel should have a wall thickness that is as constant as possible. A constant wall thickness allows for laminar flow of the plastic material, which in turn reduces defects on surfaces, including the visible ones. Also, ribs may be molded on the panel as well. However, it may be desirable to minimize the number of ribs needed because molding ribs may cause the opposite surface, i.e., the surface visible to the user, to sink. Sinking in the visible surfaces may also be reduced by making the ribs thinner than the visible surface.
Other considerations are also relevant in molding a panel for an appliance door from plastic. Once the material of the panel is injected into the mold tool and the panel is formed, the tool parts must be withdrawn from one another to allow extraction of the molded panel. Where the tool parts are separated, a parting edge may be formed. It may be undesirable for the parting edge to be visible to the user because it may not be visually pleasing and it may be undesirable for the parting edge to be accessible to the user's touch because it may not be tactilely pleasing.
In the context of forming a handle recess in a panel for an appliance door, the handle may be formed as a recess in the panel. Accordingly, it may be possible to mold the panel so that the parting edge is completely concealed from sight and feel in the recess. An example of how this issue may be addressed is shown in the prior art technology of FIG. 11. A fascia panel 12 is formed with a handle recess 13, which results in a parting edge region 26 that is covered from the user's touch and feel by a part 25. As can be seen in FIG. 11, the portion of the part 25 that extends from the handle recess 13 and wraps around the parting edge region would be visible to the user, i.e., it is cosmetic. FIG. 13 shows another prior art technology where the user can touch the parting edge region 26 on the fascia panel. Accordingly, the considerations relating to a visually appealing design for a plastic part described above must be taken into account for the part 25, which adds cost for producing this part.
Also, the part 25 must be secured to the fascia panel 12. FIG. 12 depicts another part 27 similar to the part 25. The part 27 may be provided with holes 28 to receive clips to secure the part 27 to the fascia panel 12. Alternatively, screws may be used to attach the part 25, 27 to the fascia panel 12. These attachment methods are not ideal, because they may allow the part 25, 27 to move, which can cause noise and/or an undesirably cheap feeling for the user.